Happy Human Rights Day!

Today we are celebrating Human Rights Day. At this occasion we celebrate great advances in human freedom through history—the abolition of slavery, the spread of religious liberty, the secular decline of violence, strengthening of women’s freedom, respect for free speech, etc.—as well as honor those groups and individuals working to promote or safeguard human rights in the many parts of the world they are currently being violated or threatened.

Believing in the inherent dignity of individuals means human freedom is worth defending with all our strength and passion. For that reason, and because freedom plays a central role in human progress, it is also worth gaining a better measure and understanding of the spread of, and limitations on, freedom around the world. This is the main reason for creating the Human Freedom Index, which is published in collaboration among the Cato Institute, Fraser Institute, Institute for Economic Analysis, Liberales Institute, and Visio Institute. The latter two are 4Liberty Network members,

The Human Freedom Index is the most comprehensive global measure of civil, personal and economic freedom so far devised. You may view the index here, see how countries and regions of the world rank, examine how income and democracy relate to freedom, get a sense of how various freedoms relate to one another, and otherwise gauge how the world is doing on 76 distinct indicators.

Lastly, although Human Rights Day technically commemorates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we think the Human Freedom Index and its definition of freedom—the absence of coercive constraint—can help us think more carefully about the state of freedom around the world.